Grief Graffiti

Today a newly bereaved acquaintance reached out to me for support & it felt good to be able to say “I truly understand”. I’ve said this before but it’s a club we didn’t choose to join but one that we desperately need in our grief. I know nothing I say will heal or cure, but there is something hugely comforting in knowing someone “gets it”, no explanation needed. In our conversation we spoke of the array of emotions & the many layers of grief, sometimes so many at once you think you’re going insane. We spoke of the guilt & the feeling that we’re not doing it “right”. We spoke of the fear & the worry about the future, finances, relationships, children, all of it.

I do not have any answers, any cure, any magic recipe to make it better. I am still in my early grief & some days I am barely hanging on by by fingernails. So I am quick to admit that I am not one to give any advice. But I can say that if there’s one thing that has helped me through thus far it’s learning to lean into the grief, to fully embrace whatever emotional wave is hitting me at that moment. I’m reminded of the Beatles’ song, “Let it Be”, a song I have sang and performed hundreds, maybe thousands of time in my life. But the words never resonated so much with me as now. “When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me (she lost her child), speaking words of wisdom: Let it be.”

David Kessler, the world’s foremost expert on grief, said:

“There is something powerful about naming this as grief. It helps us feel what’s inside of us. So many have told me in the past week, “I’m telling my coworkers I’m having a hard time,” or “I cried last night.” When you name it, you feel it and it moves through you. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, but I shouldn’t feel that; other people have it worse. We can — we should — stop at the first feeling. I feel sad. Let me go for five minutes to feel sad. Your work is to feel your sadness and fear and anger whether or not someone else is feeling something. Fighting it doesn’t help because your body is producing the feeling. If we allow the feelings to happen, they’ll happen in an orderly way, and it empowers us. Then we’re not victims.

“Sometimes we try not to feel what we’re feeling because we have this image of a “gang of feelings.” If I feel sad and let that in, it’ll never go away. The gang of bad feelings will overrun me.” The truth is a feeling that moves through us. We feel it and it goes and then we go to the next feeling. There’s no gang out to get us. It’s absurd to think we shouldn’t feel grief right now. Let yourself feel the grief and keep going.”

~David Kessler

Becky Hemsley, an author and poet says in the intro to her poem below: “The best way to move through any emotion is to allow ourselves to feel it. And I think this is so so important with grief.”

“Your grief’s a raging river

And it floods you from within

The current is too strong

And you are struggling to swim

You want to get upstream

Because it’s there that feels like home

And so you’re wading through

The deepest waters all alone

But though it seems to make no sense

Surrender to the flow

And let the river take you

Where it knows you need to go

Just let the water hold you

Whilst you take a deeper breath

‘Cause the fight against the current

Means your body needs to rest

And when you feel ready –

As the river seems to slow

As the water’s running gently

And you feel the floor below

Then stand and look around

And you will find you’ve made it through

You’ll realize that the water

Always knew what it should do

Yes, you’ll find the raging river

Taught you how to swim and breathe

‘Cause if we’re to get through grief

We must allow ourselves to grieve”

~Becky Hemsley, Downstream from “When I Am Gone”